INQUIRY DESCRIPTIONS
Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry Forum
November 8–9, 1996
INQUIRY DESCRIPTIONS
Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry Forum
November 8–9, 1996
In 1996, the Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry held a
forum in which researchers, teachers, and professionaldevelopment specialists from the fields of science, mathematics, history, writing, and the arts examined the topic
of inquiry.
Prior to the forum, participants were asked to write a short
description of inquiry from their professional perspectives.
Each participant’s inquiry description is reprinted here.
ARTISTS, WRITERS, AND HISTORIANS
Daniel DiPierro
Artist/Educator, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
I see inquiry teaching as commitment to a highly
active social endeavor. The work itself involves a number of critical elements which must be woven together
intricately over a prolonged period of time and then
practiced as an ongoing evolutionary process.
I want to qualify this belief with an even stronger
one. I see inquiry learning to be an essential and basic
discovery process for most individuals, especially
young children. Inquiry is practiced naturally from
birth as a primary way to develop an understanding
of the world around us. Utilizing curiosity and intuition, all of the senses and instincts for observation,
seeking and questioning and making predictions,
playful interactive investigation, and the making of
connections and use of memory. These are at the
same time tools and skills for learning and understanding, which are naturally there but that can also
be nurtured and encouraged through guidance.
The places where I see ongoing need for focus, awareness, and change include not only classrooms and
schools, but also in the areas of teacher training and
professional development, as well as with tools for
assessment. Of course, it should extend throughout
the entire education community, from administrations to state departments, right on to the parents and
families at home.
I feel an important key towards the success of any
inquiry teaching involves an active practice by the
teachers or facilitators, themselves, in the inquiry
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process. It is sort of a “practice what you preach”
view, where the process is modeled in the very design
of the learning environment and systems within
which inquiry is introduced.
Laura Farabough
Artist, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
To be an artist is to ask questions, to probe material in
search of its weakness, strength, durability, vulnerability, in search of some unknown thing that is and is
not the material, to make associations with or to find
the correspondences between the limited matter at
hand and the larger world, to articulate—visually,
aurally, structurally, metaphorically—something intuitively if not intellectually known, to configure/constrain matter within a conflicting and/or contrapuntal
form in order to persuade the invisible (the unknown)
to emanate.
Reiko Goto
Artist, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
I am a sculptor and installation artist. I have been
interested in site issues, places and opportunities for
human-nature interface. “Creative inquiry” is an
essential process for my art making. The process of
that inquiry follows:
1. General observation, questions and hypothesis
2. Observation and research
3. Evaluation and critical thinking
4. Process the evaluation to new hypothesis, repeat
2 and 3. Repeat 2, 3 and 4 until you feel ready for
step 5.
5. Final evaluation
6. Modeling
7. Presentation
My product is more often process and human relationship modeling than an actual static product. I am
interested in creating interface points of thresholds
between the divergent realities of nature and humanity in the urban setting. “Nature and humanity in the
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urban setting” is a complex system of inter-relationships. To understand, I need to access other disciplines. Therefore, a key element of my process is considering different aspects of the experience of place. I
have increasingly been able to work in an interdisciplinary manner, working with biologists, entomologists and other natural sciences. I think the different
views and thoughts mixed or connected together
begin to reflect the complex reality that we see, hear
and feel. Working in an interdisciplinary manner
forces me to communicate outside my own discipline
and allows me to begin to understand the way other
professionals process the experience of place.
Two and a half years ago my husband and I moved to
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Coming to new places has
always excited me. It is an opportunity to encounter a
different landscape, geography, habitat (plants,
insects, birds, fishes, invertebrates and mammals),
weather, people and history. After being here for a
year, my husband and I were introduced to Nine Mile
Run, a historic stream valley. Nine Mile Run was identified in 1910 by Frederick Law Olmstead Jr. for its
beauty and potential as a public park. In 1921, the
Citizens Committee of Pittsburgh began to plan for its
eventual transformation into parkland. It was subsequently bought up by the steel industry looking for a
slag heap disposal site. Seventy years later, the 240acre site has slag piles as high as 20 stories and the
same water problems (sewage) that Olmstead identified in his report 80 years earlier. My husband, myself
and colleagues from other disciplines starting looking
at the site together as a research team interested in
the transformation/reclamation of “dump” into
public space. We are looking at the site from five points
of view: (1) context/history, (2) habitat, (3) land,
(4) water and (5) policy. I am the principal investigator looking at habitat issues. I have Frick Park, which
is next door to the slag site, to look at as a model. I
am still in stage one of my inquiry: 1. Observation;
forming a hypothesis and a path of inquiry.
Identification of systems.
I don’t know what I am looking for yet. It sounds like
looking for a treasure in a desert (slag is porous and
provides a desert-like atmosphere). The treasure could
be a flower, butterfly, bird, rock or small stream. These
are not just ordinary flowers, butterflies, birds, rocks
and streams. They are very unique and specific to the
place. They provide the meaning of place. Once I recognize these specific treasures in the place, I never see
the place same as before. My quest as an artist is to
provide an opportunity for my audience to experience
these treasures. In that experience the dump is
reclaimed.
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November 8–9, 1996
Mildred Howard
Artist, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
It is very difficult for me at this time to clearly define
inquiry. However, my understanding of inquiry
becomes deeper over time, therefore the way I
describe it changes.
There are elements of inquiry that I believe remain
constant and can be categorized in many ways. Many
of these elements have multiple meanings and can be
overlaid with others. The elements I came up with
thus far are:
• Pursuing an idea, interest or question in a particular
area
• Understanding or having a willingness to learn what
drives that interest and where the ideas stem from
• Trusting previous knowledge and using that as a
vehicle to pursue one’s idea, interest or question
• Understanding that there are choices that one can
draw from
• Creating an environment that is safe to work and
pursue ideas, interests or questions
• Having a choice of materials and developing a dialogue with those materials.
• Developing a knowledge about the relationship of
the materials and the connections made to the idea,
interest or question
• Allowing the time to do what is necessary using the
inquiry approach to working
Process
• Following one’s own thinking
• Keeping track of that thinking
• Exploring and using one’s gut feeling
• Risk taking and facing the void; that is, you know
you want to make something and may or may not
know what the end result will be
• Working with accidents and sometimes following
that path
• Exploring areas of problem solving
• Making an intangible idea, interest or question tangible
• Making a feeling a visual experience
• Developing an on-going dialogue and creating a
visual vocabulary for future use
• Understanding that making art is something that is
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yours that also can become someone else’s (art that
can evoke the viewer in a way that brings up issues
that are personal, private and at the same address
the artist’s concerns).
Amalia Mesa-Bains
Artist, California State University - Monterey Bay,
Seaside, CA
Research
Observation
Material experimentation
Evaluation/revision
My creative inquiry process usually includes a period
of research, gathering of information and images
related to my area of interest. This period of research
and investigation allows me to gather bits of information across multiple disciplines: demographic data,
photography, theory, literature and visual images. In
the form of inquiry I am only looking for fragmentary
references that can help me elaborate my original
concept. This inquiry is characterized by coincidence,
disassociate references and a rather baroque complexity from a beginning premise.
The preliminary stage of information and image
development also sets the stage for the decision of
artistic medium and selection of material.
The material experimentation is followed by a third
process of evaluation and revision guided by inquiry
and judgment. This process of evaluation and revision
is a time of testing the material representation against
original concepts, relevant to context and aesthetic
preferences the process of inquiry is fluid and alternates between cognitive and sensory responses.
Don Rothman
Director, Central California Writing Project,
UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
Using writing as an impetus and ally into inquiry, the
students and teachers with whom I work discover
themselves in each others’ presence. By writing, they
transform what is taken for granted into something
compelling, worthy of attention. By listening to others
read their writing, they reconstruct their expectations
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for what people can do to explore difficult questions,
to transform their workplaces, to liberate themselves
from the demons and censors that have both kept
them from writing and from engaging in creative professional dialogue. The central question in this work is
often: “What do our relationships with one another,
our aspirations as educators, our lives as citizens have
to do with the teaching of writing?”
The summer institutes that I lead and the undergraduate writing classes that I teach are, fundamentally,
about learning to ask better questions. At the heart of
trying to improve writing instruction is the challenge
to determine how one’s own experience as a writer
can be a useful guide to teaching. What questions are
worth asking about one’s own writing practice? What
do we learn from the intellectually, emotionally and
politically charged discussions in our five-week institutes about how our classes can become sites for
inquiry? What about our faculty meetings?
From a childhood shaped by a Talmudic tradition of
inquiry, in which texts are always presences in one’s
interrogation of the world, I now teach students to
enter conversations with themselves, each other and
with the authors and characters peopling our reading.
Inquiry, in this way, makes certain kinds of conversations possible...and rewarding.
Mary Anne Smith
The second phase of inquiry is material and physical
in that it pertains to the actual making of the art
objects. In this observation play, manipulation and
continual observation help determine the direction of
the material exploration.
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November 8–9, 1996
Executive Director, California Writing Project,
UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Writing is both a tool for inquiry and the subject of
inquiry. On the one hand, writing itself unearths new
questions or understandings, discoveries or qualifications. On the other, writing invites questions about
how writers write, about their processes, about techniques that help them. What writers write—their
intentions, their genres, the qualities and merits of
their work—these, too, are inquiry subjects in the
field of writing.
Inquiry is central in Writing Project professional development where teachers come together, not as recipients of someone else’s knowledge, but as scholars
whose teaching approaches merit scrutiny and debate.
Writing project teachers are themselves researchers,
conducting studies in their own classrooms and presenting them at conferences, in in-service workshops,
and through publications. Most important, however, is
the stance of Writing Project teachers. As models for
their own students, they are constantly constructing
and revising, whether the construction is a piece of
writing or a classroom learning strategy.
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David Weitzman
• develops a broader repertory of roles, feelings,
attitudes, values and relationships
Historian, Covelo, CA
• adapts to and functions in widely diverse cultures
and environments
Behavioral Objectives: Inquiry/Discovery Learning
Sometime in the early 1970s it became de rigueur for
principals to ask teachers to submit lists of “Behavioral
Objectives,” expecting things like “arrives in class on
time every day” and “does homework assignments.”
But I felt that inquiry learning, for both teachers and
students, resulted not so much from new materials
and strategies, but from new behaviors more suited to
learning by discovery. So I submitted the following
list, including my favorite quote on education from
Alice in Wonderland:
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try
again; draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one
can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the
Queen. “When I was your age I always did it for half
an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many
as six impossible things before breakfast!”
Basic Skills
• acquires, organizes, stores and retrieves relevant data
and concepts
• learns how to learn and constantly improves on
personal learning process
• uses feedback mechanisms to monitor and evaluate
own behavior
• determines, evaluates and directs own destiny
• increases flexibility of thought without fear of disorientation
Personal Behavior
• adapts to change without fear of losing identity and
personal values
• develops increased tolerance for ambiguity
• collaborates effectively in groups while maintaining
individuality
• anticipates change and makes adjustments to
personal trajectory
Interpersonal Behavior
• understands similarities and differences in all of
humanity
• moves freely in and out of groups
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November 8–9, 1996
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• identifies with many elements of our society
SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE EDUCATORS
Doris Ash
Science Educator, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
Philosophically, I find inquiry a wonderful metaphor
for life. Interacting with phenomena in open-ended
ways, following individualized learning paths and
noticing everything that occurs, especially the oddities, is a fitting way to go through one’s days, whether
practicing science, the arts, or life.
Since coming to the Exploratorium I have become
convinced that, although inquiry can be a highly personalized experience, it has structures and elements
that can be explored and described. The “magic” can
be examined and transformed into tools for those
who want to teach it and practice it.
I am most interested in understanding the commonalities and disjunctures that we may unearth when
examining inquiry across the disciplines. This
uncharted territory is fascinating.
Understanding better the role of inquiry in learning,
the delicate interplay between tried and true processes
and the complex content that underlies science is the
other aspect of inquiry that fascinates.
Dennis Bartels
Director, Center for Teaching & Learning, Exploratorium,
San Francisco, CA
Description of Inquiry in an Organizational Setting
The following is a little different approach since I
want to apply inquiry to an organization setting
rather than a specific academic discipline. It’s an
interesting question: Can inquiry be a way of doing
business? I think that it is an essential element if an
organizational goal is building a learning community.
Inquiry for me, in a teacher development setting, is
letting the teachers bring the questions (and hence
the curriculum) into the professional-development
space. When teachers are provided the opportunity
and the structure, the questions they ask tend to be
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November 8–9, 1996
very authentic, powerful and complex, and not
always content-bound but intimately related to teaching and learning. In well-designed experiences, the
process is almost fool-proof. Teachers are passionately
engaged and motivated because they are asking the
questions closest to their hearts and progress towards
the answers they seek.
about how to assess a project’s “outcomes” in the
most important sense—that is, in how well the participating or subject students will later find themselves
prepared for their lives and careers.
Take that one step further into an organizational setting. In managing a program, center, or entire organization, where is the intellectual and emotional
lifeblood being generated? I believe that asking good
questions, investigating them, developing responses
and asking the next set of questions that emerge is
central to a vibrant and thriving organization. It is a
way of doing business that is reflected in decisionmaking, problem-solving, and organizational culture.
It starts with the questions that naturally occur to the
people inside the organization and builds on the
expertise resident in the people who make up the
organization. It is reflective, empowering, critical,
respectful and open. No one is ever asked to swallow
anything whole or set-up to be fixed (deficit model).
It welcomes coaching and feedback. And it builds
from strengths and what we already know or can do.
Director of Education, Buffalo Museum of Science,
Buffalo, NY
Bronwyn Bevan
Assistant Director, Center for Teaching & Learning,
Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
Inquiry is a mode of teaching and learning that is
about questioning, hypothesizing, and discovering. I
believe it is about a shift in attitude rather than an
upheaval in curriculum and classroom.
My work at the Exploratorium is about developing,
facilitating, and administering programs which are
centered around inquiry learning for students, youth,
and teachers. A lot of my time is spent on fundraising: seeking out funders and then proposal writing.
What I find, as I interact with the funding world, is
(not surprisingly nor inappropriately) a concern with
outcomes. What does each dollar yield? On a scale of
1 to 100, how much content has been transmitted?
How can you graph the results?
Responding (in proposalese) to this concern has made
me think more and more, first about how one assesses
long-term reform initiatives, and second how the
classroom balance of content and process is difficult
to test over the short term, but is manifestly critical—
over the same short term—for a student’s school
career. Which has led me to think about the guinea
pig nature of the “subject” kids, as their districts’
reform efforts are developed and implemented, and
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Peter Dow
My interest in inquiry learning derives from my role as
Director of Education for a Natural History museum.
Much of the current discussion of inquiry in educational circles turns around the effort to construct
learning environments that encourage learners to ask
their own questions and to seek answers through the
controlled manipulation of the environment.
Investigations in the physical sciences (light and
color, properties of electricity, behavior of objects in
water, etc.) have, for the most part, dominated the
discussion of the application of scientific inquiry to
the field of education.
Given my present situation, my own concerns about
inquiry have focused primarily on the examination of
the behavior of plants and animals, and to a lesser
extent, human beings. Investigations of this sort are
less easily manipulated through controlled experimentation, and tend to involve longer time spans (to
allow for changes to occur) and place considerable
emphasis on observation, drawing, journal keeping,
etc. than on manipulation. The inclination to avoid
manipulation, for example, may derive from a desire
to understand the behavior of the organism in its natural habitat.
Another interesting aspect of natural science inquiry
involves the making and use of collections. Almost all
natural history investigations involve the use of carefully documented historical collections as a database
for making comparisons and for relating current discoveries to past findings. The significance of coming
across a particular insect in a particular location, for
example, may depend on where and when this creature has been observed in the past. Thus, the continuous development and maintenance of a research collection may be a critical aspect of natural science
inquiry.
To pursue a deeper understanding of natural science
inquiry we are planning to open an Inquiry Center in
the museum. This center will be a place where museum visitors—children, teachers, parents, interested
adults—can pursue their own investigations of the
natural environment of western New York. The Center
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will contain collections representing the museum’s
major areas of scientific expertise: botany, entomology, vertebrate zoology, geology, paleontology and
anthropology. It will also have tools for investigation
such as Wentscopes, a Magicam, an Internet connection, and equipment for carrying out field investigation in the natural sciences. By establishing this facility we hope to create a laboratory for learning more
about how to carry out inquiry-based investigations in
a natural history museum.
Hubert Dyasi
Director, Workshop Center, City College School of
Education, New York, NY
Curiosity is the centerpiece of inquiry—the desire to
know (in Greek, scio—etymological root for the word
science); and curiosity is indicated by a question or
questions (voiced or acted out), e.g. “Would Napoleon
have won at Waterloo if he had been well on 18 June
1815?”
To inquire is to seek, obtain, and make meaning from
answers to one’s questions. In science inquiry, questions generally relate to natural and man-made
phenomena. I identify the following components of
science inquiry:
• Noticing and raising questions about a phenomenon.
• Firsthand inquiry involving exploration; generating
investigatable questions and carry out as planned.
• Documentation of inquiries (creating a rich portfolio of information and knowledge): records of questions raised, indicating which ones were answered
and which ones were not, procedures followed,
materials used and for what purposes, collected and
organized data (e.g. in graph form, anecdotes, etc.)
and of references consulted; journals and notebooks
highlighting inquiries and resulting understandings.
• Articulation of inquiry experiences: giving demonstrations, making oral presentations of investigations carried out; public defense of inquiries, findings and abstractions orally in discussions and also
in writing.
• Discourse on other people’s related inquiries: comparison of own work with published material dealing with specific related aspects of science
inquiries—identify focal points of each source,
meanings of the focal points, illustrations used to
clarify the focal points, arguments advanced in support of the points, implications (as stated by the
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source) of accepting the focal points. The inquirer
indicated points on which she/he agrees or disagrees
with the source, bases for disagreement or agreement, relevance of focal points to own inquiries
(sources include science books and journals, scientists and science educators).
• Reflective Abstraction: Inquirer must demonstrate
how inquiries constitute science “news” or significant science knowledge; one must also demonstrate
how the findings of the investigation can be used to
build other significant science knowledge. For example, it is not sufficient for one who investigates densities of different liquids simply to report his/her
results; it is necessary to make abstractions that
relate to flotation and to ways in which the concept
of density might be utilized to illuminate other
inquirers. An inquirer also compares his/her “science” news with findings of professional sources in
the selected area and test the reliability of both
her/his “news” and findings from professional
sources.
Jay Hackett
Center for Science, Mathematics & Engineering Education,
National Research Council, Washington, DC
My perspectives on inquiry are influenced by my
interests in how students develop understanding in
science and what that means for improving K–6
science curriculum, instruction and assessment. My
favorite “working” definition of inquiry is attributed
to the physicist Fred Fox. He looked at scientific
inquiry as (paraphrased): “Doing your damnedest,
with no holds barred, to develop reasonable solutions
to compelling problems and questions.” The National
Science Education Standards refer to inquiry as “the
diverse ways in which scientists study the natural
world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work. Inquiry also refers to
the activities of students in which they develop
knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas, as
well as an understanding of how scientists study the
natural world.”
Barry Kluger-Bell
Science Educator, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
“I can give you answers but I can’t give you understanding.” That’s what I have to keep telling my workshop teachers as they struggle with their questions
about the world. Understanding, connections between
old experience and new, and sense made of one’s
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experience in the world is built by interacting with
that world and reflecting on those interactions.
Exploring, raising questions, trying things out, testing
ideas, observing closely, making models and representations, talking with friends, seeking experts and
books; all of these are part of the effort to learn and to
understand. In the end, the workshop teachers may
have some answers and usually have even more questions, but they realize that this process of inquiry is
the way that they can build their own understanding
of the world.
Jerry Pine
Physicist, California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, CA
Try Webster’s: “The act of an instance of seeking
truth, information, or knowledge about something.”
(plus three inches of small print with further definitions and illustrations.) A heavyweight word! A good
definition, which covers the ground nicely, but
abstractly. The key word “question” is missing,
though it could be there.
In my work as a researcher in neuroscience, the big
question is how do brains work—too big for anyone’s
inquiry and suitable for all 10,000 of us. An interesting collaborative inquiry. I have my piece, a question
I have been trying to answer for 16 years. Along the
way, there have been many sub-inquiries: why cells
refuse to grow; what electrical signal should I expect,
and what do I see; what is known about CCD cameras; can we succeed in making a microdevise with
neurons inside it; and so on. The common denominator is a question. And we are always problem-solving
in search of the answer. The approach is sometimes
hands-on and sometimes not. Sometimes there is a
hypothesis about the answer to the question and
sometimes not. (The omnipotent hypothesis in some
pedagogical writing is misleading—even dangerous to
the training of young inquirers.)
My other work is as a teacher of pre-service and inservice teachers and also of professional science students. I see an interesting shift in the context of
inquiry, to “inquiry teaching.” I think the underlying
pedagogical task is twofold: To give students experience in the process of inquiry as it plays out in real
science (as contrasted to “school science”—a whole
other barrel of snakes) and to give students a chance
to gain fundamental knowledge, through their own
experience and of their own construction—gut-level
knowledge. The knowledge is very unlikely to be discovered through inquiries students can invent to
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answer fundamental questions. For example, does the
earth move around the sun or vice versa? What is
sound? What is electricity? How does a roller coaster
work? These are questions which took hundreds of
thousands of years to answer by “free inquiry,” by the
process we want to teach in fact. If we want this “content,” we need to design a structure within which the
inquirer can be lead to construct knowledge with the
help of designed experiences, and with a knowledgeable facilitator. Content vs. process is not a war. We
need both, we need to teach for both, and we need to
provide a wide range of instructional structure to do
that. Lastly, except for the youngest children, the
inquiry cannot be all hands-on. Using the work of colleagues, books, videos, computer simulations, and so
on are part of the process, as they are in real science.
Rob Semper
Associate Executive Director, Exploratorium,
San Francisco, CA
Inquiry as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is
“The action of seeking, especially for truth, knowledge
or information concerning something; search,
research, investigation, examination; the action of
asking or questioning; interrogation”
For me as a scientist, inquiry is defined by a series of
features:
• Scientific inquiry is personally driven
• Scientific inquiry is concerned with content as well
as process
• Scientific inquiry is as much about asking good
questions as getting good answers
• Scientific inquiry occurs within an existing framework of previous knowledge
• Scientific inquiry is concerned with gathering
evidence
• Scientific inquiry is developed in scientists through
an individual and group mentoring process over a
considerable length of time
• Scientific inquiry involves the skills of directed
observation, problem solving, analysis, and experimentation
At its heart, the scientific enterprise is driven by
inquiry at both the individual and group level. For
the individual scientist, the quest for understanding is
fostered by an insatiable curiosity about how things
work and why things are the way that they are. For
the discipline as a whole, progress is measured by the
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successful progression of responses to questions about
the fundamental working of nature.
A scientist by definition is naturally an inquirer, and
while much of the professional development that a
scientist undergoes is seemingly about “learning the
lay of the land,” the truth of the matter is that a key
feature of science schooling is apprenticing oneself to
a master inquirer to learn how to ask “good” questions, i.e. ones that lead to fruitful answers.
The practice of inquiry is a way of thinking, of processing, of operating in the world. For me, what is key
is having an initial curiosity about something and a
framework to ask questions. This need for a personal
interest in what is being examined is why inquiry
cannot be taught as a process skill only irrespective of
the topic of study.
Scientific inquiry is not unbounded, but rather is corralled by a desire to fit into the particular developing
self-consistent world view that is the current scientific
paradigm. A key feature of this paradigm is the
repeatability of results and the use of mathematics as
a consistent tool for maintaining self consistency.
The development of inquiry skills is beset by two key
tensions, one that occurs between open-ended discovery on the one hand and structured investigation on
the other.
Linda Shore
Co-Director, Teacher Institute, Exploratorium,
San Francisco, CA
We were born doing science. By randomly touching
objects and placing things in our mouths, we learned
as toddlers what is hot or cold, sweet or sour, sharp or
dull, rough or smooth. We learned almost everything
through inquiry. Watching toys sink or float in the
bathtub is/was a chance to investigate the principle
of buoyancy. By playing catch, we made discoveries
about gravity and trajectories. By building towers out
of blocks, we explored principles of size, scale and
center of mass.
We learned about the world by experimenting and
observing—trying things out, watching what happens.
We might even create an explanation that helps us
make sense of our observations. To me, this is inquiry
and the essence of “doing science.”
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way we lose our
natural curiosity about the world. It seems to happen
when we are faced with our first science class. Science
becomes a list of facts and formulas to memorize. Our
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natural instincts to do inquiry are suppressed. In my
work at the Exploratorium, I try to help parents and
teachers rediscover the child-scientist inside themselves. This is accomplished by modeling inquiry
through workshops, institutes and activities described
in publications I work on.
Fred Stein
Science Educator, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
My description of inquiry within the discipline of science begins with perceptible phenomena. Whether
within the physical or life sciences, observations can
be made about the behavior of the phenomena of
interest. As questions arise in response to what we
perceive in the phenomena, they can be acted on
through further focused observation, or designed
interventions. Predictions and theories can be tested
through further observation or intervention. In this
process more observations and questions will emerge
leading to a more complete familiarity with the
behavior of the phenomena.
The key is to ground one’s questions within the perceivable phenomena itself. Theories that attempt to
answer these question are valid only as they arise
compellingly from the phenomena. In this way, the
private thinking involved in perceiving and trying to
understand phenomena can be made public through
the demonstrable behavior of the phenomena of
interest.
Understanding is built through an iterative process of
alternating between observations and interventions
with materials and phenomena and sharing one’s
understanding of the phenomena through prediction
and description. Currently, my work involves trying
to understand more fully the elements of this process:
the qualities of materials and phenomena that are
well suited for inquiry, the types of forums for sharing
understanding that increase the opportunity for concept development, and the methods for ongoing facilitation of this process.
Karen Worth
Senior Scientist/Professor, Faculty, Wheelock College,
Newton, MA
Children’s inquiry in science is at the heart of what I
do but it is not where my work lies. It is rather in
thinking about how to create the classroom environment in which children’s inquiry can and will take
place and, more specifically, how to provide the adults
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who work with children—the teachers—with the
knowledge, skills, art and craft of this thing loosely
called inquiry teaching.
I would like to share my image of science inquiry that
emerged from a dialogue between Hubert Dyasi and
myself during the planning process for a two-week
institute on science education for museum educators.
In our conversations we felt it was important to have
a scaffold or framework within which we all could
talk about the inquiry experiences the participants
were having, the inquiry experiences they might provide for teachers who came to their museums and the
inquiry of children in museums or classrooms. Hubert
wrote about inquiry; I drew inquiry. This diagram was
the result:
November 8–9, 1996
then be the substance of an investigation that is more
structured. It suggests, though badly, with its arrows
and lines that there is only a tentative sequence to the
process of inquiry and that the elements of open
exploration, finding questions, focused investigation
and drawing of conclusions intertwine throughout
the search for understanding and for conclusions.
The diagram has proved useful, perhaps most importantly, to promote an understanding of the importance for children of the elements of inquiry that are
often missing or underemphasized in classrooms: e.g.
David Hawkins’ “messing about,” children’s own
searches for questions, and the conclusions, tentative
as they may be, that children can draw from good
work.
INQUIRY
MATHEMATICIANS AND MATH EDUCATORS
Notice, Wonder, Explore
Joan Easterday
Take action, extend questions
Project Manager, Mathematics Renaissance, Santa Rosa
City School, Santa Rosa, CA
Focus observations
and raise questions
Focused explorations
explore, observations,
take action
Test out with new
investigations
collect data
Organize data, formulate
patterns and relationships
Bring together data/ideas
and formulate patterns
and relationships
Diagram: Hubert Dyasi, CCNY; Karen Worth, EDC
It is an attempt to focus attention on various elements
of inquiry; to suggest the importance not just of the
experimental aspect but of deep and open experience
with phenomena. Also it emphasizes the moment
within inquiry when it becomes important to take
early experience and from that ask a question that can
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In my work in math and science with students and
adults, inquiry creates an image of the open frame of
a structure with deep roots spreading into the ground.
The tap roots represent the ways in which people
learn—many “hands-on” experiences with concrete
materials and having a variety of experiences from
many perspectives with a concept. Then there are the
roots representing mathematical, linguistic, artistic,
musical, kinesthetic, inter- and intrapersonal strengths
in learning. The ground itself is the support for the
learning process—respect for people, a belief that
everyone can learn, the expectations that everyone
will think and share their thinking, the questioning
by all the learners in the group, the comfort level created so people can take risks. The beams of the open
frame are the common learning experiences bound
together by connections between experiences and the
awareness of the bigger ideas of the concept. The
open spaces between the beams represent all the
potential curiosities of the learner; curiosities and
questions that need further explorations and investigations. The frame of previous experiences and understandings offers the support for new connections and
new ideas. The open spaces are unknowns, conjectures, hypotheses, adventures awaiting. In my own
learning I know that sometimes there are often large
parts of the structure that I have built, but will
be so unstable that they will disappear for a while
until more experiences reaffirm those conceptual
understandings.
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My work is to provide the learning environment, the
experiences, the connections to prior experiences, so
that people can build their own structures and have
the freedom to seek out their own inquiries. The
struggle and art of teaching are the balance, flexibility
and timing to create this.
Sha Xin-Wei
Mathematician, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
First, a disclaimer. My discipline is different from my
work. I was trained in differential geometry, which is
the study of what changes and what remains invariant
as we make smooth deformations and transformations
of shapes—shapes that may be many-dimensional, or
even not drawable in any ordinary computer screen.
My current work ranges from the architecture of
human-computer systems to philosophy. Here I’ll
restrict my comments to mathematics.
In mathematics, the aim is to understand what is true
and beautiful in structures. One common mathematical approach is to clear away extraneous understandings until one can see why something is true. Another
way is to try to recast a situation in terms of a different formal apparatus, a different mathematical language, to see if one can understand it better in the
new light (or even more conveniently, apply theorems
that are already known in the new domain). But it’s
crucial to understand that mathematics is not computation. In fact, you might say that mathematicians are
the laziest thinkers in the world, because they would
work themselves to death to find an elegant way to
avoid computation. This may seem to slight the deep
contributions that mathematicians have made in the
fields of logic, combinatorics and complexity theory
inspired by problems from computer science, but I’d
like to try to convey the spirit of how mathematicians
work, rather than describe the math itself.
There are as many types of mathematical inquiry as
there are schools of painting. Let me try to give a flavor of some of these different kinds of thinking. First
of all there are problem solvers and there are theory
builders. Problem solvers are those who like to carry
around as little theoretical baggage as possible—
they’re like hikers who skip up the mountain with
sneakers and a water bottle. Theory builders are more
interested in constructing large conceptual apparati
from which solutions to specific problems can be read
off en masse. Despite master mavericks like the late
Paul Erdos, who is one of the patron saints of the
problem solvers, the limelight in world class mathematics shines on those who construct wonderful theo-
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ries. (Recent example: Seiberg-Witten invariants.)
Nonetheless, some of the deepest mathematical theories rise out of very concrete, specific problems. In the
case of Fermat’s Last Theorem, vast theories ranging
from hard analysis to algebraic geometry were recently re-focused to show the unsolvability of a very specific equation over the integers.
A second way to distinguish modes of mathematical
inquiry is by the kind of mathematics that a person
does. Formally different fields of mathematics also
engage very different intuitions and modes of
thought. These modes are as different from one
another as the difference between, say, how a computational linguist and a poet might approach the problem of translating a poem. What are these different
modes of thought? They include: algebraic, formulaiccomputational, intuitive, geometric, measure-theoretic,
probabilistic and discursive-logical. I’ll discuss a few of
these approaches, but it will necessarily be skewed by
the limits of my own experience. As we proceed, I hope
you’ll get not only a sense of how different mathematicians can be from one another, but also some insight
into how anyone can think mathematically.
TEACHERS
Marilyn Austin
Teacher-in-Residence, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
As a teacher interested in science, I have researched
the delivery of science lessons to young students. My
formal training in using an inquiry approach, however, began with the Exploratorium Introductory
Summer Institute around light and color in 1987. My
perspectives changed radically that summer and I
began to experiment with an inquiry approach in my
own classroom.
Inquiry, as I understand it, is a process of exploration
which is guided by a personal interest or question. It
involves risk-taking and experimenting which can
lead to pathways where the learner may discover
meaningful concepts and understandings.
As I reflect on my continuing growth in this inquiry
venture, I realize that I have gone through increments
of change. First I discovered that providing a variety
of materials would increase hands-on opportunities
for learner investigations. Then I discovered that I
could guide and promote many of the student discoveries by asking open-ended questions at the right
moments.
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The step on which I am most focused currently is
considering how valuable students’ questions are to
their own inquiry. Students have an increased ownership of the process of inquiry if they are motivated by
their own questions.
Mary Di Schino
Teacher, Graham & Parks Alternative School,
Cambridge, MA
Inquiry, to me, means pursuing a question and figuring
out the solutions to problems through a process of observation, development of explanations (theories), testing these through experimentation, discussing the outcomes and adjusting theories based on the outcomes.
These various steps are developed with the participation of all members of the class and always shared
and debated in group discussions. The discussions are
carefully guided to elicit everyone’s participation.
Comments and situations are presented by the teacher
to push the development of ideas and enrich the conversation. By listening to one another, and working to
make sense of what others say, students are invited to
broaden their notions of the topic and to consider
new ideas. As explorations progress new questions
constantly surface. These work to broaden and enrich
the original question adding many facets to the
“answer.” It is my goal that students go beyond
knowledge and to gain understanding. Materials and a
“rich” environment sometimes means simply having
the right photograph or illustration for the children
to look at, while at other times a microscope might be
needed through which to look at ear wax.
Embedded in all of this is the assumption that the
classroom atmosphere is one in which children feel
safe to articulate ideas without fear of ridicule or judgment. One in which they know their comments will
be given serious consideration and respect. Also
implied is the presence of a structure that permits
exploration and experimentation within clearly stated
boundaries that insure the children’s well-being.
These are the tenets which form the basis of my work
with children, particularly in the area of science.
November 8–9, 1996
upon children’s resources, while also introducing them
to the modes of inquiry in discreet disciplines. As
such, I build up and support their natural inclinations
to learn in an interdisciplinary way and also explicitly
teach specific ways of investigating a subject.
As a teacher researcher, my goal is to understand more
clearly the different elements that influence children’s
success as learners in the classroom. Therefore, I
investigate how issues such as creativity, imagination,
home culture, class, gender, race and classroom culture impact on the learning of both individual children and groups. I also explore with children how different modes of exploration and expression, such as
writing, drawing, movement, performance, song and
talk further their processes as learners.
Cappy Greene
Science Educator, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
An inquiry approach to teaching stimulates curiosity
by teaching children how to observe very closely,
encourages children to take more than one quick
look, provides adequate materials for exploration, and
makes it safe for students to ask questions and to take
risks. It helps them to make connections to events in
their own lives, and gives them ownership of their
own learning. I believe that using inquiry can be a
means for significant change in teaching in the
schools, from providing an education that relies on
memorization of facts to one that teaches thinking
and problem-solving, and enhances the ability of students to relate what they learn to new problems that
come up later. Equally important, teachers need to
inquire into their own teaching methods, by closely
observing and recording what is happening in the
classroom, questioning whether the goals desired are
actually being achieved, and constantly reflecting on
their own teaching.
We all start our lives as inquirers, learning about the
world by exploring. If our methods of teaching in the
schools can be turned towards inquiry, it could rekindle that early curiosity and instill a joy of learning
that enriches a person’s life in many areas, including
the appreciation of the natural world as well as the
world of art.
Karen Gallas
Author/Teacher, West Roxbury, MA
Rhoda Kanevsky
Children bring to school many different ways of
investigating and understanding their world. Those
ways are multi-modal, multi-sensory, and interrelated,
that is, they are not separated by artificial boundaries
of time and space. As a teacher, I attempt to draw
Teacher, Powel School, Philadelphia, PA
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I’m interested in the relationship of observation,
description and inquiry. To illustrate this, I’d like to
give an example from my classroom.
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November 8–9, 1996
In the spring, the children have their own silkworm
caterpillars which they observe every day and even
take home on weekends. They have many opportunities to describe the changes they see from eggs to
caterpillars to cocoons to moths, by writing, drawing
and through talk, informally and in more formal
whole class discussions. Through these ways of
describing they raise questions individually and collectively; this leads them back to closer observation
and more detailed descriptions. They develop theories
and make connections to other work we’ve done.
They design ways of answering their questions. Their
language becomes more concrete and more poetic,
their drawings more detailed and expressive.
RESEARCHERS
My own inquiry is largely about how these kinds of
observations and descriptions give rise to understanding and how an inquiry community forms in the
classroom around ideas and experiences. I’m interested in what comes from each child individually and
what comes as a result of their being part of a lively,
inclusive group: evidence of their learning and ideas
that emerge from collaborative talk. Using collaborative processes grounded in observation and description, my colleagues help me to examine the drawing,
writing and class discussions that document children’s
work with others, the more I see their work.
Questions and issues continue to arise for me from
this reflective process.
Practical thought, on the other hand, is not usually
directed toward arriving at some generally accepted
understanding, but rather toward consideration of
several different possible lines of action in a certain
set of circumstances; each of them may be “correct.”
Practical reasoning is highly contextualized, and the
choices that are made depend on local knowledge and
constraints—and on such considerations as what is
prudent, what is traditional, what is obligatory and
what is moral. Thus, practical inquiry tends to be concrete rather than abstract, timely rather than timeless,
proximate rather than remote, local rather than general. It strives as much for wisdom as for knowledge.
Carol Walker
Teacher, Horace Mann School, Newton, MA
I have never thought about the word inquiry as
a particular way to think about my teaching/learning.
That is until this opportunity to participate in
Exploratorium’s Institute for Inquiry Forum! I realized
with delight how perfectly this word encompasses so
much of what I hold most valuable in my work, how
many entry points there are in considering it and how
thrilling it is to come together with others to explore
its significance. When I think about teaching I immediately think about questioning. I work very consciously to make my questioning of students, of
myself, of curriculum decisions, of work with parents
and most recently my work with colleagues sincere
and honest. To do this I seek questions that I truly
want answers to. I look for confusing moments (or
hours!) in all of my work to better understand as
many facets of the confusion as possible. I try to let
my curiosity lead me in my questioning and I work to
be as open as possible to what answers I might find.
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Mike Atkin
Professor of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
My interests focus on practical inquiry—that is,
thought directed toward action.
Scientific inquiry usually aims primarily at the understanding of general principles that are assumed to
have broad explanatory power; at any one time, furthermore, there usually is general agreement within
the scientific community about what those principles
are (the laws of motion, for example).
Schools tend to stress thinking directed toward scientific understanding, rather than toward justifiable
action. So some of my work centers on introducing
the practical into the curriculum: What might be
done in this community to mitigate the effects of
water pollution? What might constitute a nutritious
and economical diet for a Cambodian family living in
Oakland? What kind of AIDS-prevention program
makes sense among a group of mostly undocumented
farm workers? Scientific knowledge is necessary in
addressing all these issues; it is never sufficient.
Two broad areas of science-related practical reasoning
are emerging in the schools. One is environmental
education (at least some approaches to environmental
education). Another is the move toward establishing
programs of technology education—that is, education
about technology, including, quintessentially for my
interests, design. (We are not here talking necessarily
about “high” technology.) Technology, unlike science,
is an enterprise directed almost exclusively toward
altering the human condition, and it necessarily
involves considerations of worth as well as the utilization of knowledge. My hope is that such thought will
be more highly valued in schools of the future.
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For teachers, my interest in practical reasoning leads
me to facilitate and study collaborative teacherdevised research, inquiry in which teachers themselves work together, using their own classrooms as
“laboratories,” to change their practices based on matters they decide are important. In such groups, teachers with similar goals share the results of their inquiry.
They usually embark on a cycle in which they try
things, discuss what happened, and try something
new as a result of the deliberations. (An actionresearch focus for a group of teachers might be, for
example, how better to get students involved in practical inquiry. They first must value the common goal,
and then begin to devise new ways of getting closer to
their evolving views of what constitutes a desirable
curriculum.)
Ted Chittenden
Research Psychologist, Educational Testing Service,
Princeton, NJ
Much of our current work with schools and districts is
guided by the idea that the first purpose of assessment
—for primary science—is to help teachers document
and understand children’s learning. The assessment
stance is one of inquiry, of “finding out.” When a
teacher asks: What have you noticed lately about our
mealworms? or What are some things you know
about shadows?—the questions are not tests in disguise, but rather reflect the teacher’s attempt to support children’s observations and to gain some sense of
the direction of children’s interests and thinking.
Assessment as inquiry is intended to guide instructional decisions, not grade pupils. It represents an attitude as much as a method, and may be contrasted to
the more common stance of educational assessment—
testing of “checking up”—to determine whether children know the expected or desired answer. In primary
science, there generally are no single right answers to
children’s investigations; correspondingly, assessment
strategies need to be responsive to multiple, and
sometimes unexpected, outcomes.
November 8–9, 1996
(Inquiry plays a lesser role in traditional transmission
models of education where knowledge is considered
stable and teachers are meant to teach, students to
learn.) Inquiry implies active seeking for explanations—experimenting, observing thinking, researching
(in books) and communicating—using, in short, all
available resources.
John Dewey, a strong advocate of inquiry in education, made a case against absolute answers1; he saw
knowledge as always unfinished, deriving from judgment and belief and revealed though action—through
doing and making. His educational views were supplemented and supported by the findings of Piaget: that
learning occurs developmentally through interactions
between the individual and the environment. In
terms of practice, the Piagetians (“constructivists”)
and Deweyans (“progressive educators”) advocate
inquiry as central to the teaching/learning process.
More recently, Neil Postman suggests a “narrative” as
a basis for educational practice: “Knowing that we do
not know and cannot know the whole truth, we may
move toward it inch by inch by discarding what we
know to be false. And then watch the truth move further and further away.”2 Postman suggests an educational program that can be seen as inquiry-based—that
students, rather than being instructed in the “truth,”
study the history of errors in every field of learning.
Thus students would learn to question, explore and
analyze, their findings remaining tentative.
The theorists cited above are mainly (although not
exclusively) concerned with knowledge in the areas of
math, science, and history of ideas. Michael Craig
Martin, an art historian, makes an air-tight, elegant
rationale for understanding art through observation
(a form of inquiry): “Every work of art needs to carry
within it the terms by which it may be understood.”3
This deceptively simple statement might be broadened to include all areas of knowledge even though,
in some cases, "the terms" may be hard to perceive,
take time, consultation or even advanced technologies
to dig out.
Dewey, John (1929) The Quest for Certainty. New York: Minton,
1
Balch & Co.
Brenda S. Engel
Postman, Neil (1965) The End of Education: Defining the value of
2
Senior Research Associate, Lesley College, Cambridge, MA
What is inquiry? The response to this question has to
be influenced by beliefs about knowledge: how we
think we know what we think we know. Those who
are keen about inquiry as a basic pedagogy usually
view knowledge as culturally embedded and formative, open to discussion, discovery and revision.
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school. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, page 67.
Martin, Michael Craig (1995) Drawing the Line. London: Arts
3
Council exhibit catalogue. Introduction, page 7.
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November 8–9, 1996
Wynne Harlen
George E. Hein
Director, Scottish Council for Research in Education,
Edinburgh, Scotland
Director, Program Evaluation & Research Group,
Lesley College, Cambridge, MA
In the context of science education, inquiry is a major
means for learners to extend their understanding of
the natural and made environment. It is essentially
active learning, inseparably combining both mental
and physical activity. The motivation for inquiry is
within the learner and the learner’s relation to the
things around him or her. Inquiry starts with something that intrigues, that raises a question in the
mind of the learner—although it is not necessarily
expressed as a question—something that is not
presently understood, that does not fit with expectations, or just something that the learner wants to
know about, defining the cutting edge of learning
in a particular area.
How inquiry is defined depends on one’s definition of
education. I have described a model for classifying
educational theories in the two papers on
Constructivism contained in the TEN web pages.
The process of inquiry involves linking previous experience to the new experience in an attempt to make
sense of the new. Thus it starts from what is already
known or believed about how the world works. There
may be several possible explanations, or hypotheses,
drawing on different previous experience. In science
this first step will be followed by some exploration or
investigation to see whether what happens in a practical situation fits with what the hypotheses predict.
There may be different possible interpretations and
other evidence may need to be sought to decide what
makes most sense. The fit between the evidence and
the interpretation in terms of the ideas underlying the
hypotheses should be the essential test of its applicability. But even though the evidence may fit, its limitation has to be realized and the idea accepted only tentatively, to be challenged by possible further evidence.
Learning through inquiry is consolidated by reflection
on how ideas or understanding have changed and by
reviewing and improving the process of working
towards answering the initial questions. The latter is
essential, since the learning by inquiry depends on
how the testing (processing) of ideas and evidence
proceeds. If it lacks the rigor of the scientific approach
(controlling variables as necessary, for example) then
ideas which should be rejected or changed may be
retained and vice versa. The value for learning
depends on the processes of the inquiry—the linking,
the hypothesizing, the gathering of evidence, the
interpretation, the communication, the reflection.
Thus the development of inquiry skills is essential to
the development of understanding through inquiry.
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Inquiry as a pedagogic method is a process that occurs
within the bounds of theories. For Discovery
Education, inquiry is the process that leads learners to
“discover” the concepts. For Constructivism, inquiry
must include the second component mentioned
below.
My chief concern, from my perspective, is that scientific inquiry be recognized as including two main
characteristics. For me, these are necessary components of inquiry.
a) Science inquiry involves the natural world, that
those who inquire subject themselves to the possibility that nature will get in their way. Inquiry in science
must involve doing, it cannot be limited to theory.
b) Science inquiry consists of actions in the world that
allow for multiple results. Any activity that is intended to lead to one result only (or in which the manipulation of the world is such that possible alternative
lines of experimentation are prohibited) should not be
labeled as inquiry. The definition excludes almost all
school laboratory work, since that usually is intended
to demonstrate a concept, not generate novel or
diverse activity.
Barbara Scott Nelson
Director, Center for the Development of Teaching,
Education Development Center, Newton, MA
My current work is not discipline-based, but consists
of working with school and district administrators on
the ways in which their own administrative practice
might be affected by the mathematics education
reform movement.
If the norms and values embedded in the current
mathematics education reform movement are to
become a permanent part of school life, there will
need to be not only large-scale change in the nature
of mathematics instruction but also a virtual “reculturing” of school. The implications of the vision of
the NCTM Standards go far beyond what would result
if many individual classrooms changed, one by one.
What is at issue is a new intellectual culture for
schools—a culture that legitimates and supports
curiosity and challenges as the engines of learning,
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continuous exploration of mathematics and mathematical thinking on the part of both students and
teachers, an orientation of reflection toward one’s
teaching and children’s learning, and intellectual colleagueship among teachers and between teachers and
administrators. That is, not only will it be necessary
for teachers to reinvent mathematics instruction from
within a new conceptual frame, it also will be necessary
for teachers and administrators together to reinvent
school culture from within a new conceptual frame.
There is currently a paradox in the education reform
movement. While many discipline-based reform
efforts give only slight attention to administrators,
systemic reform efforts, aimed largely at administrative structures and practices, tend to be derived from
principles of collaborative governance rather than
from specific knowledge about how to support
inquiry-based teaching and learning. And so there
may be a disconnect between reform efforts aimed at
classrooms and reform efforts aimed at school and district structures and practices.
In the Mathematics For Tomorrow project we are in
the process of developing a discipline-based intervention program for administrators and are doing
research on the process of conceptual change and
change in practice for administration. One element of
this work is to explore administrators’ understanding
of the nature of inquiry-based learning and teaching
and to explore with them the nature of a school culture that supports inquiry-based learning and teaching. This work is just beginning. But the administrators with whom we have worked have been clear that
in order for their own work together to be inquirybased, the questions being discussed need to matter to
them. That is, the questions must be very real ones.
They told us that in order to examine real and difficult questions in an open-minded way, asking each
other honest and tough questions, it helps to be part
of an ongoing group of people who have made a clear
commitment to thinking hard together. In such a
context, trust and honesty develop. It was clear that
these administrators saw that what obtained for them
would obtain for teachers and children as well.
See: Nelson, B. S. (in press). “Lenses on Learning: How administrators’ ideas about mathematics, learning and teaching influence
their approaches to action in an era of reform.”
Barbara Rogoff
Professor of Education, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
Inquiry? What is it? There you go.
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November 8–9, 1996
Within my area of work—cognitive development and
learning—I’d emphasize that inquiry learning
involves the active effort to understand a phenomenon, event, or idea.
The purpose of inquiry learning could be pure curiosity and fooling around, though it can also focus on
seeking understanding for solving a problem or reaching a desired goal. In either case, I assume that the
inquirer is INTERESTED in finding out.
This contrasts with many other learning situations,
where the information is not necessarily of interest to
the learner; if there is a purpose it may not be clear to
the learner, and the goal of understanding may be less
emphasized than the goal of memorizing.
Although inquiry learning thus involves an active
learner, this does not mean that the learner is solitary
or cannot be involved with others who may provide
leadership in the inquiry. I have the impression that
many who value inquiry learning shy away from providing leadership in learning situations, perhaps
because most of our experience has been with teaching that is more didactic rather than providing support and guidance in inquiry. I think that this is one
of the main issues for both schools (at all levels) and
museums—how to foster inquiry with intellectual
leadership.
Ann Rosebery
Project Co-Director, Chéche Konen Center, TERC,
Cambridge, MA
For me, inquiry is a way of being in the world. It is a
stance about one’s relationship to the world, to people, to one’s work, to knowledge. When I am able to
take it on, inquiry enables me to ask “What do I think
this means?” before making assumptions about meaning. It helps me listen to the perspectives of others,
before assuming I know what they are going to say.
Having said this, it is important for me to note that
most of the time I find myself not adopting an inquiring perspective toward the world. I find, for example,
that I charge headlong into a situation—a discussion
among elementary teachers about why boats float, a
discussion among students about where earwax comes
from, or a discussion among colleagues about what a
student was meaning in a particular transcript—thinking that I know the why or the where or the what.
This sense of certainty can lead me to trouble—not
understanding someone’s meaning or missing the
complexity of the problem at hand. On good days,
someone or something in the situation will reach out,
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INQUIRY DESCRIPTIONS
Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry Forum
upend my sense of certainty, and force me to slow
down, to retrace the tracks of my own assumptions,
and listen again to what is being said. For me, inquiry
represents the unending struggle to recognize what I
don’t know.
Laura Stokes
Research Associate, Inverness Research Associates,
Inverness, CA
People in education usually use this definition of
action research: a form of collective self-reflective
inquiry undertaken by participants in social situations
in order to improve the rationality and justice of their
own social or educational practices, as well as their
understanding of these practices and the situations in
which these practices are carried out.
People who focus on teacher research usually use
something like this: systematic and intentional
inquiry carried out by teachers.
“Practitioner inquiry” is used as a synonym for action
research or teacher research.
What distinguishes practitioner inquiry as a form of
learning is that it engages teachers in direct investigation of the phenomena of their own practices, change
processes and circumstances. Typically, teacher learning is viewed as teachers’ responses (translations,
adaptations, implementations) to general knowledge
other people construct about teaching practice or
other problems of schooling. Also, teachers usually
find themselves in learning environments structured
as in-service workshops or courses. Practitioner
inquiry, on the other hand, connects theorizing and
practicing in the person of the practitioner/researcher,
aims to create context-specific and relevant knowledge (rather than general) and takes place within the
teachers’ own workplace context.
Beth Warren
Project Co-Director, Chéche Konen Center, TERC,
Cambridge, MA
November 8–9, 1996
Over the course of my life I have experienced inquiry
in a variety of disciplines: literature, literacy, cognitive
science, biology, classroom discourse, teacher research.
This list is itself a little odd: Is teacher research a discipline in the way, say, that biology is? Embodied as a
certain stance toward classroom teaching and learning, teacher research assumes, in my view of it, a
strongly integrated set of analytic perspectives, tools
and concerns—chiefly, ethnographic, sociolinguistic,
cognitive—that can help shed light on questions
about learning in a discipline, e.g., how do my students make sense of adaptation or buoyancy? What
can I learn about my students’ discourse and activity?
As I’ve briefly described it here, then teacher research
is a heterogeneous practice of inquiry, one that
derives its power from bringing into a single focus
perspectives and tools from various fields and grounded, engaged, concerned questions about students’
learning. But I think I would argue that the other,
more tradition bound disciplines I mentioned above
are also heterogeneous, and grounded in particular
content and concerns. From my own perspective as a
learner or practitioner who has experienced inquiry in
various degrees in each, I think I engage in a lot of
border crossing while in any one domain. For example, the particular sensibilities I bring from having
learned to look carefully at texts are useful to me as I
work with both historical and empirical evidence on
adaptation. And so on. Whether this is a matter of
pragmatic end or idiosyncratic practice or truth, I cannot say. I seem to use my wits each case, balancing
strengths in one area against weaknesses in another.
Not knowing how I would approach this as I began, I
am quite a bit surprised by where I ended up. This
captures for me an important quality of inquiry that I
think is often overlooked, sometimes even derided:
the meaning potential of ambiguity, of not knowing
exactly where one is, of not being sure exactly what
one means, of not knowing where one is going, of
being confused, of shifts in significance, of incompleteness. In learning theory we tend to privilege clarity and explicitness, and while these certainly play
their part, our emphasis on them may blind us to this
other, deeply situated quality of human experience.
I don’t know quite how to approach this question.
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